FALL RIVER — Despite the recent successful turnarounds of two previously struggling schools, nearly half of the Fall River's public schools still rank within the lowest 20 percent of those statewide when it comes to academic performance.

Local school officials say they have both cause for concern and optimism about where those schools stand as September comes around.

A new school year begins in September, and the state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education will release the results of the prior year’s student academic performance tests. Those results could affect a school’s percentile ranking and state-determined accountability rating.

As it stands, according to DESE data, Fall River currently has four Level 1 schools, one Level 2 school, seven Level 3 schools and one Level 4 school.

Some district schools, including the new prekindergarten-to-Grade-8 Henry Lord school, do not yet have ratings because they do not have sufficient MCAS data, according to DESE.

Superintendent Meg Mayo-Brown said she is optimistic because at least half the district's schools last year met targets on another measure, called the progress and performance indicator, or PPI. It measures both student performance and annual growth. It means a few current Level 3 schools are making strides toward improving student achievement and therefore could improve both their percentiles and ratings, while she is concerned at least one school may possibly move in the opposite direction.

Mayo-Brown said district officials had been maintaining a list of schools that were at risk of becoming Level 4 schools based on their percentiles. That list currently includes Fonseca and Letourneau elementary schools. Another school that was previously on that list, Samuel Watson Elementary School, had already been designated Level 4 last fall.

According to DESE, Fonseca and Letourneau both currently rank in the second percentile in terms of academic performance. Other Level 3 schools, including Viveiros and Tansey, are on the higher end of Level 3, ranking in the 17th and 18th percentiles, respectively.

Mayo-Brown said that, based on district benchmarks, Letourneau is showing signs of improving and appears to be turning the corner. But benchmarks at Fonseca are not showing the same improvement.

“We’ve been concerned about that for the last two years,” Mayo-Brown said, adding that Fonseca had “ranked in the bottom 2 percent of all elementary schools in the commonwealth."

"It’s ripe picking for the commissioner,” she said.

According to district benchmark assessments, Fonseca had shown some “slight improvement in the upper grades,” Mayo-Brown said, but “no improvement in K through (second grade).”

That means by the time those students are in the third grade, they will need remedial help.

Mayo-Brown said Fonseca’s struggles can be attributed to “a combination of factors.”

The school has a large high-needs student population: 91.4 percent of the school’s 804 students in the 2013-14 school year. In addition, more than 90 percent of Fonseca students were low-income, according to last year’s data from DESE.

Mayo-Brown added that, among district schools, Fonseca has a student population that is among the “most-distressed,” poverty-wise.

In other schools with similar populations, systems and staff are in place to “support students’ social-emotional wellness,” Mayo-Brown said. Fonseca doesn’t quite have those supports yet.

As a result, students “are not ready to learn,” Mayo-Brown said. “So what’s happened at the school as a result, the school administration spends the vast majority of their time on student conduct and behavior. Until you get a system in place, we won’t see any traction in instruction."

She explained that she recently met with Fonseca teachers, who she said mentioned some possible changes, including a longer school day.

“The purpose is to add a half-hour more in the morning for teachers to do responsive classroom work,” Mayo-Brown said.

While Fonseca may appear to be facing challenges now, it wasn’t always a Level 3 school. Neither was Letourneau.

In 2010, when Massachusetts introduced the level accountability system, Fonseca, then a new school, was initially designated a Level 1 school. That stood for 2011. In 2012, it was designated Level 3. Letourneau, also a relatively new school, was initially designated Level 2.

Schools that had been previously designated Level 3 had seen movement in a positive direction. Silvia, for example, was a Level 3 designated school in 2010. It is now a Level 1 school. Greene School is another example. In 2011, it was also a Level 3 school, but in 2012 was boosted to Level 1, the same designation it received last year.